Roundtable report – innovation in defence

Panellists

In past decades, the defence sector has enjoyed a position of primacy in innovation. It was at the forefront of technology development, and its inventions were often adapted to cascade down to the civilian sector. But this is no longer the case.

Animal Dynamics CEO Alex Caccia noted that his company’s development of small drones that mimic the flight capabilities of insects depends to a large extent on the availability of technologies – in particular, the sensors, used in mobile phones – that until recently were prohibitively expensive. This, he said, is both an opportunity for his company and a threat to others. “For example, there’s a chip issued by Texas Instruments called a sensor tag that contains every kind of sensor you can lay your hands on, and it costs about $17. Ten years ago it would be in the hundreds of thousands. That opens up a set of possibilities to develop more sinister applications for very small budgets. We need to develop the capability to offset that.”